Iron Monday #3: Tony's idea of telepresence differs wildly from Ciscos

Back in the early 90s, Tony Stark wasn't doing so well. First, he'd been shot by an unstable ex named Kathy Dare in Iron Man Vol. 1 #242. He survived, but was left paralyzed. But oh, things got so much worse. A microchip was implanted in his spine, which turned out to be a plot to take control of the billionaire and ended up slowly destroying his nervous system. While all of this was going on, Stark created a version of his of his Mark VIII armor that allowed him to move while wearing it, but when his nervous system began going to pieces, he created the NTU-150 Telepresence Armor, which first appeared in issue #290.

What made the Telepresence Armor interesting was that it was effectively a robot. Stark at this point was bedridden and slowly dying, so donning an suit of armor was no longer an option. Instead, the TA was designed to be controlled via a special headset that transmitted Stark's thoughts to the armor through subspace. The downside was that he was susceptible to feedback from damage the unit took.

I read the issue where he uses the armor to fight something called the Technovore, which ended with the armor's destruction. I also remember reading issue #291 where Tony saves James Rhodes from the Battledroid attack that started in the previous issue and drops off the War Machine armor and together they whoop some serious ass. I always thought it was cool to see the NTU carrying the other armor in a hand dandy case on its back. The armor looks cool as heck, but I think some of the drama was lost since Tony wasn't actually in the armor. Sure, there was the danger of what was left of his nervous system being destroyed by feedback, but considering that he could just cut the connection before the armor takes a fatal hit.

 Picture sources: 1, 2, 3.

Sauron from the X-Men has rather skewed life goals

From Spider-Man & the X-Men #2.

She-Hulk Thursday #2: She's really playing hardball

Thought you forgot about She-Hulk Thursday, didn't you? Hahaha...I totally did.

Guest starring Red She-Hulk because I never said She-Hulk Thursday was strictly about Jennifer Walters! :V

I dig how meta the writers would get with She-Hulk.

B-b-b-book haul

I keep forgetting to post my most recent book buys from last Saturday, so here they are:

The names are hard to read on some of them, so here's a list:

Jack of Kinrowan - Charles de Lint
A Killing in Comics - Max Allan Collins
Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell
The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl
Fall of Giants - Ken Follett
Under the Dome - Stephen King
The Illuminatus! - Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
The Relic - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Strain - Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

I scored these from two different Goodwills and it only cost me $9 combined, sans taxes. I'm reading Faceles Killers now, but I don't know which one I'll read next or if I'll just shovel them into the queue.

See anything you like?

What if Oliver isn't talking about Damian Darhk? (Arrow) (SPOILERS, maybe)

I woke up the other morning with that thought in mind. You know how this season they keep going to Oliver standing in a cemetery in front of a grave and vowing to Barry Allen that he's going to kill somebody? We're all assuming that he's vowing to kill Damian Darhk, the big bad of season 4 and the man responsible for Felicity being paralyzed. But, what if it isn't Darhk? What if Oliver is talking about somebody else entirely? We know that Oliver makes the declaration six months after the season four premiere, but for all we know, that's when the season ends. I'm starting to think Barry's presence was merely a red herring to make us think that Felicity was the one in the grave, but of course she wasn't. So who do I think is the target of Ollie's wrath?

Malcolm Merlyn or an as yet to be introduced baddie. I think it's Malcolm because of all the damage he's done to Thea. After all, he's the one who drugged and used her to kill Sara Lance, which caused Ra's al Ghul to go to war with Team Arrow. This in turn led to Ra's mortally wounding Thea and the latter developing a blood lust after being dunked into the Lazarus Pit. Thea can't break the curse because Ra's is already dead and because she refuses to kill in order to satiate the blood lust, now she's dying. The promo I saw for tonight's episode implies that despite the profession of love he has for his daughter, he's actually okay with her dying. I mean, didn't Malcolm start the war so he could become the new Ra's al Ghul? If Thea's the one in the grave, then that gives Ollie more than enough reason to want to kill him.

As for it being a new baddie, it makes sense if the grave yard scene is taking place at the end of season 4 and whoever Ollie wants to kill is the big bad for season 5.

So, who's in the grave? I have a few guesses: Lyla Diggle, Quentin Lance, Donna Smoak, Thea, or Oliver's son (and man that would be BRUTAL). It could also be Felicity. I know we saw her in the limo after Ollie left the grave and she told him (while crying) to kill whoever Ollie is determined to kill. Buuuuuut how do we know that that's actually Felicity and not some figment of Oliver's mind. I mean, he's clearly wrecked emotionally, so it wouldn't be far-fetched if he's imagining things. Plus, if Felicity is dead, it would be a total and absolute mind frak and the fandom would lose its collective shit.

We'll find out sooner or later.

The Flash 2x13 "Welcome to Earth-2" (SPOILERS)

I think Cisco's face sums up my feelings about this episode pretty well.

(Collider)

Because holy cow, that was one hell of an episode! As the title suggests, this was the ep where Barry, Harrison Wells, and Cisco travel to Earth-2 in order to rescue Wells's daughter, Jesse and stop Zoom. If you like easter eggs, then "Welcome to Earth-2" is going to put you on cloud nine. We get several when the three while traveling through the Speed Cannon to Earth-2:

• John Wesley Shipps's Flash from the 90s TV show
• A certain Kara Danvers, whom Barry will be meeting next month
• Connor Hawke, who is set to appear in a future episode of Legends of Tomorrow
• Jonah Hex, who I think is also set to pop into LoT
• A Legion of Super-Heroes flight ring
• Grodd

None of those are in order of appearance and unfortunately, I missed seeing the last three, but fortunately the internet didn't. I love that they included Shipp's Flash, which was a nice tip of the hat to the actor who went from playing Barry Allen to playing Barry Allen's dad, which is another thing I love about this show. Supergirl's brief cameo is a no-brainer, given the impending crossover. A number of fans on Tumblr said that news of the crossover should have been held back until after this episode aired, since that the news would be that much bigger. The flight ring is the most intriguing out of all of the cameos because of the possibilities it presents. Is the Legion slated to make an appearance on one of the shows? Legends of Tomorrow seems the most logical because of the time travel element. On the other hand, Supergirl has connections to the superhero team in the comics and the Justice League Unlimited cartoon, so that's an option. Could a Legion of Super-Heroes spin-off be on the horizon? Granted, it could have just been nothing more than a tease, but the mind wonders.


So anyways, Barry, Wells, and Cisco arrive on Earth-2 and naturally the Earth-1ers are mindblown by everything they see. Earth-2 is interesting as it's a blend of the 21st century and the 1940s. They have the tech of the former (for the most part), but things like telephones look like they came from the '40s. It's strange, given that they have things like apps and smart watches. The biggest difference between the two Earths are the "dopplegangers", what Cisco calls their Earth-2 counterparts. We know that from the promo materials that Caitlin Snow and Ronnie Raymond are Killer Frost and Deathstorm on Earth-2, but what of Barry, Iris, Joe, and Cisco himself? Well...

Barry is still a CSI, but he's a total dork. He's doesn't appear to be a speedster, but he's still on my forthcoming list of people who might be Zoom. Oh, and he's married to Iris, so there's that. Earth-1 Barry switches places with him after Wells knocks him out.

Iris is a police detective with the Central City Police Department. She dabbled in journalism, but decided to follow in her grandfather's footsteps.

I said Iris followed in her grandfather's footsteps, rather than her dad, because on Joe isn't a cop on Earth-2, he's a jazz club singer. Another departure is that he doesn't like Barry's doppleganger and the feeling is mutual. He blames E2 Barry for Iris being a cop, because he thinks she only did it to help put Barry through school.

Another huge difference between the Earths is that Barry's mom is still alive on Earth-2, which leads to an emotional scene where E1 Barry gets to talk to his mom's E2 counterpart. Barry got to talk to his mom again and Grant Gustin played it so well.

I want to stop for a second to talk about some more easter eggs, because like I said, this episode was rich in them:

• The Central City PD HQ has a wall mural that says "A Free and Just Society for All". Possibly a reference to the Justice Society of America, Jay Garrick's team in the comics?
• Earth-2 Barry has Bruce, Hal, and Diana on his speed dial. Those of course are the secret identities of Batman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman
• Atlantis exists, which means Aquaman might too

Back on Earth-1, Caitlyn creates a new version of Velocity 6 called Velocity 7. The former was a drug created by Jay to boost his speed, but in fact caused him to lose them. Yeah, turns out he lied about Zoom stealing his speed. Jay uses Velocity 7 to try and help stop a metahuman from his Earth called Geomancer, but the drug is only partially successful and Caitlyn later mentions that she'll start working on Velocity 8 next. Now what I didn't know is that in the comics, there's a drug called Velocity 9 that was created by Vandal Savage, so this is another easter egg.

Jumping back to Earth-2, Killer Frost and Deathstorm are introduced and decide to hunt down the breachers from Earth-1. Can I just say that these two look awesome as dicks?

(via TV.com)

Danielle Panabaker was really good at playing a supervillain and I'm glad we got to see Killer Frost finally show up. One gripe though is that I wish her outfit had featured an ice motif of some kind, like blue and white coloring or something. Oh well. Killer Frost and Deathstorm both live up their names, as both show in this episode that they have zero qualms about taking lives, with the former murdering some crooks and the latter mortally wounding E2 Joe. Meanwhile, Cisco creates a device to neutralize the two until he can figure out how to activate his "vibe" powers on Earth-2. This leads to a showdown between Killer Frost and Deathstorm on one side, and Iris, her partner Floyd Lawton (yes, her partner is Deadshot, but amusingly on this Earth, he can't hit the broad side of a barn), and Cisco on the other.

And thaaat's when Cisco finally comes face to face with his doppelganger and surprise, surprise, he's a supervillain too. Here, he's called Reverb and not only is he Zoom's right hand man, but he's also developed his powers beyond just precognition.

Arrowverse Wiki.

He's basically has powers similar to Cisco's comic book counterpart and apparently Reverb was a name he used in the comics too. The interaction between the two Ciscos was interesting because Reverb tries to lure Cisco over to the dark side, or as he puts it, trying to "Cloud City Vader" him. A Star Wars ref out of nowhere. I like it. Unfortunately for Reverb and Deathstorm, they both screw up royally. Naturally The Flash intervenes to save Iris, Lawton (who honest to god fires at Reverb point blank and misses), and Cisco, only to be whammied by the two villains. Killer Frost tries to warn them away from killing Barry, but ignore her and incur Zoom's wrath as a result. Deathstorm dies pretty easily given his powers and so does Reverb, for all of his bravado about killing Zoom and taking over Central City himself. Killer Frost is spared and flees distraught at the death of her love, Ronnie. Zoom then kidnaps Barry and takes him to wherever he's holding Wells's daughter, Jesse.

So yeah, things are looking pretty bleak by episodes end. Barry is the prisoner of Zoom, who wants Barry's speed for his own. At the same time, Caitlin and Jay are supposed to close the last rupture to Earth-2 if Barry and Cisco don't return in X amount of time and the clock is ticking closer and closer to that. The promo for the next episode, "Escape from Earth-2" shows Cisco and Earth-2's Barry, Iris, Wells, and Killer Frost coming together to rescue them.



"Welcome to Earth-2" is just such an amazing episode and this post honestly doesn't even do it justice. I'm hyped for "Escape from Earth-2" and I cannot wait until we finally learn Zoom's identity this season.

Wikipedia Wednesday #3: I'm on a boat!: The Bougainville-class aviso

From the Wiki.

The Bougainville class was a type of colonial aviso or sloop of the French Navy of the 1930s that were designed to operate in remote locations of the French Empire.

The ten ships of the Bougainville class were built from 1931 to 1940 in various French naval yards. The ships were designed to operate autonomously from French colonies in Asia and Africa with a capacity of 297 tons of diesel, giving an endurance distance of 13,000 nautical miles (24,000 km). Their shallow draught allowed them to operate on large rivers, while carrying an infantry company. In this respect they were an improvement over existing gunboats.

Not much to say about this, really. Everything else that clicking "Random article" brought up was either too brief or boring. Plus, I like warships anyways, so this worked well.

Truth be told, Wikipedia Wednesday isn't as fun as I thought it would be. I didn't factor in how many tiny and uninteresting articles I'd get. Oh well, I'll keep it chugging as long as possible, or at least until I come up with a better replacement.

Off Topic Tuesday #3: Ad blocking

I thought I'd talk about ad blocking on the internet and whether it's right or wrong. This was sparked partly because of something I heard in a podcast I listened to last year, wherein the people on the 'cast were talking about Marco Arment, the co-founder of Tumblr and creator of multiple apps, who had created a hugely successful ad blocking app for Apple's Safari browser, then pulled it after two days because it made him feel guilty.

Achieving this much success with Peace just doesn’t feel good, which I didn’t anticipate, but probably should have. Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: while they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don’t deserve the hit.

Peace required that all ads be treated the same — all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren’t black and white. This approach is too blunt, and Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn’t serve our goals or beliefs well enough. If we’re going to effect positive change overall, a more nuanced, complex approach is required than what I can bring in a simple iOS app.

As you can see, his problem wasn't necessarily with the blocking of ads itself, but that his app, Peace, was more of a sledgehammer than a scalpel. I agree with his opinion here because while I favor ad blocking, I don't believe it should be unilateral. You can read about his ad blocking ethics here, if you wish.

Why I ad block

As I said, I'm in favor of ad blocking and have been ever since I discovered the Adblock extension. The first thing I do after installing Firefox on a new computer is slap Adblock Plus on it. It's not that I hate internet adverts, I'm just wary of them for a couple of reasons:

1. They can be annoying and intrusive. I've been online since like '98, so I've been around ad banners for a good little while and possibly, this is the reason for my pro-blocking views. The 90s and 00s were a terrible time when it came to banners because they were just so annoying. Imagine trying to read something on a website and having a banner flashing in the corner of your eye. I know ad banners have come changed since then, but even today, I'll come across ones that are only a few steps above those aforementioned disasters. If you want people to stop blocking ads, then make them less intrusive. Video ads are just as bad. I've watched YouTube on my phone and tablet and while I have gotten some not terrible and pretty interesting ads, most are irrelevant and annoying to me and my interests. I don't know how common it is, but there have been a few times when YouTube will just up and decide to run an ad right in the middle of the video. Like literally just cuts right to it, then back to the video after it's done. Imagine having that happen in a movie theater? People would be massively pissed off and rightly so.

Out of all the ads I encountered back in the 90s and 00s, pop-ups were without a doubt, the most annoying. I'm pretty sure if Dante Alighieri were alive today, he'd have added an eighth circle of Hell just for whoever created pop-up ads and the people who proliferated them across the web. How bad were these things? Well, the fact that all browsers have long since added a feature to block them by default is a pretty good indicator.

2. Not all ads are safe. I'm no computer expert and I'll be the first to admit that, but I've heard about how ad banners can be used to slip adware and malware into a person's computer and that's obviously something to avoid. I grok that that probably only happens on less than reputable and not even work safe websites, but just the awareness that it's possible for that to happen makes me not at all willing to run without an ad blocker.

3. Privacy. A lot of ads nowadays are generated based on your searches and browser history and that bothers the hell out of me. It's creepy, to be honest. I mean, if you go to your bank's site to check on something, you'll suddenly get ads for online banking. I know that it's probably just a one-way thing and whoever on the other end of the ad service can't (hopefully) know where and what you do on the internet, but it comes off as being nosy and a violation of privacy.

Exceptions

Now there are exceptions to my ad blocking stance because one size certainly does not fit all. I acknowledge and respect that people only have ads on their websites and blogs because they need to generate revenue in order to cover the costs of having a website and blog (since not everybody wants to use Blogger and other free services). I grok that and so in the case of the ones not owned by a media company, I'll gladly disable Adblocker if I plan on frequenting them. In fact, I've come to see that as my own seal of approval and it's the second thing I do after bookmarking them.

And you know how I complained about YouTube's ad videos? Well, I'm a bit of a hypocrite in that regard because I don't mind them if I'm watching an episode of TV show online. If I miss or have to skip an ep the night it airs, I'll try and catch it online, usually with the network's app if they have one. In those cases, there's no way to block the ads, but as I said, I don't mind them in that case. I'm used to commercials when I'm watching TV and they're useful for bathroom breaks or the quick snack run, so they serve a purpose in that case. Obviously, with online videos, I can just hit pause just the same, but years of TV viewing has made me use to them, so it's not a problem.

Solution

So what's the best solution for user apathy towards ads? Several, actually. First, made ads less annoying and intrusive. I get that they have to catch people's attention and entice them to click, but surely that can be done in a way that's not off-putting. Second, make it customizable the kind of ads that people see. There's no point in someone who's interested in cars to see an ad banner for makeup or the latest haute couture and vice versa. I'm aware that ads can be generated based on the websites you've been to, but as noted earlier, there are privacy issues I have with that. Instead, I think people should be able to choose what kind of ads they want to see, based on their own personal interests. So like the car-head would only see ads for cars, while the fashionista only sees ads for clothes and makeup vendors, and so on and so forth. If, IF this became a thing, then I would have absolutely zero problems with letting go of Adblock and so would others, I think. Obviously, not everybody, but enough to make customized ads a worthwhile solution.

In the end, it's 2016 and internet advertisers need to evolve with the times and change the way they run ads so that everybody benefits.

I can't believe The Brady Bunch only ran for 5 seasons

I never realized this until like a year and a half ago when I looked up Wikipedia's article about The Brady Bunch to see what the final episode was and then found out that this famous show that has never been off the air and holds a place in the annals of pop culture only ran from 1969 to 1974. Surprised me, because I always assumed that the show ran for much longer because of how old the Brady kids looked at the end of the show's run. Hold on, I think some visuals will help here:

Season One.

Season Five.

It's surprisingly difficult to find pictures of the famous 3x3 grid, but these will work. As you can see, the Brady kids grew fast in those five years. No idea how old he really was, but Barry Williams (Greg) looks like he's somewhere in his twenties. I think fashion also had a hand in making the show's run seem longer. The first season, their clothes are traditional white bread style and closer to Leave It to Beaver attire. Then as the show progressed into the 70s, the wardrobe changed to what was hip at the time. I mean, damn, Mike went from straight hair to curly! Another factor is that I've never watched every episode of The Brady Bunch and especially not in the order they aired, so going from straight-laced to groovy, I just figured that it was on TV for more than five years.

In case you're wondering, by the way, the final episode of The Brady Bunch is the one where Bobby tries to make money by selling hair tonic and it turns Greg's hair orange when he uses some of it. Yup, they ended the show on a high note.

I guess nobody's angel is a centerfold anymore: Playboy ditches nudity (sort of)

My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel is the centerfold
Angel is the centerfold

-- "Centerfold", The J. Geils Band.

So yeah, there was a lot of buzz on the internet about Playboy's decision late last year to ditch their nude spreads and centerfolds and here's the cover to the first issue since then.

(via US Weekly)

It's meant to be a send up to Snapchat, but also a thumbing of the nose at the ubiquity of nudity on the internet, which was the reason why Playboy moved on from nudity. The lovely lass on the cover, by the way, is Sarah McDaniel. And what of the Playmate of the Month? Apparently it's sticking around, but will lack nudity for the most part. I had to italicize that for emphasis because while there will no longer be straight-up nudity like in days past, it doesn't mean that the ladies posing in the magazine will always be clothed, but if they do pose nude, it'll be covered strategically. It's not unlike how other magazines like Vogue and such will do photoshoots of celebs in the buff with their bits and bobs covered by a well placed limb or prop.


By the way, the Playmate for March is Dree Hemingway.

Her great-grandfather was some famous writer, a bloke named Ernest Hemingway. Never heard of him, but apparently he was a big deal^[1]. Anyways, Dree Hemingway's pictorial illustrates the strategic nudity avenue that Playboy is taking. There's two nude pictures of her: one where she's walking away from the camera, but with her left arm obscuring her butt crack. You can still see the cheeks, but it's about as much as you'd see were she wearing a bikini. In the other nude, she's facing the camera, but slightly bent and covering her breasts and southern region with her hands. Considering Star Trek: Enterprise featured a scene where one of the female characters covers herself similarly and it didn't get cut from the episode, I doubt that will ruffle many feathers or violate Playboy's new rule.

So what do I think about Playboy's new changes? I totally agree with them. Nudie mags are obsolete, given that anybody with even a 56k modem can easily google nude pictures and more on the internet. Expecting someone to lay down however much the cover price is just to look at breasts, derrieres, and vaginas certifiably ludicrous. At the same time, Playboy has always been so much more than a nudie mag. If they were just that, then the magazine would never have established a place in popular culture like it has and Hugh Heffner wouldn't be the icon that he is. You know the joke "I only buy it for the articles"? Well, that was a pretty legit reason for buying Playboy. Behind the nude pictures, Playboy is a literary, political, and cultural magazine all rolled into one. In the case of the former, quite a few famous writers have had short stories published or their novels serialized in it. It's a political magazine because it never shied away from publishing articles concerning current and political events that were relevant. Finally, it's a cultural magazine for all of the interviews it has done with all sorts of famous folks, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. By ditching the nudity, Playboy is simply transitioning to what it has been since its inception, a quality magazine no different than the other periodicals that grace the racks everywhere else.

One final note: If you want to see more pictures of Sarah McDaniel or the rest of Dree Hemingway's Playboy spread, GQ and Playboy have them on their sites. And as always, be sure to leave your 2 cents in the comments below.

^[1]: Yes, of course I know who Ernest Hemingway is. Just because I don't read much outside of sci-fi and fantasy doesn't mean I'm an literary illiterate.